:: Being Mormon ::

Here’s the real Plan of Salvation:

You can’t sin while you’re in meetings.

Pretty much every decision follows that.

How is investing in stocks different from gambling?

Here are some thoughts from church leaders that helped me understand the difference.

What is gambling?

“The attitude of taking something from someone else in order to enhance our own position — the essence of gambling — leads us away from the giving path of Christ and toward the taking path of the adversary.”
(Dallin H. Oaks, Ensign, June 1987)

“Gambling degrades human dignity and saps moral strength as it promotes a philosophy of getting something for nothing.”
(William D. Oswald, Ensign, Feb 1986)

“Gambling is simply a process that takes money and does not offer a fair return in goods or services.”
(Gordon B. Hinckly, General Conference, April 2005)

Each of these quotes (emphasis added) stresses the idea that gambling is all about getting wildly disproportionate returns. A perversion of the natural law of the harvest.

What is investing?

“Of course, there is a place for wise investments, but generally temporal investments are at the mercy of forces beyond our control — the death or defection of a key executive or salesman, the patenting of a new invention that replaces our company’s product, the sudden change in the price of oil, the unexpected shift in interest rates, the fraud or embezzlement of a trusted partner, or the precipitous fall of the stock market.”
(John Groberg, Ensign, April 1986)

“Interest never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it never goes to the hospital; it works on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation; it never visits nor travels; it takes no pleasure; it is never laid off work nor discharged from employment; it never works on reduced hours… Once in debt, interest is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it; it yields neither to entreaties, demands, or orders; and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.”
(J. Reuben Clark, Conference Report, April 1938)

Where’s the quote about how investing is the best way to protect your assets? About how wise it is? These quotes both highlight the tremendous risk involved. Is the answer to just not invest?

I think the parable of the talents suggests otherwise. We are to be active, doing good things with the money we have. But we must not do it in a spirit of greed or covetousness. We must accept that we may lose what we invest, and that we invest to help others.

And then we must have faith that the Lord will help us as we do our best to help others.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

So, am I free to start a religion that believes all children should be killed before they turn eight (and evil)? It would be a firm tenet of this church that we should be anxiously engaged in the work of blowing up elementary schools, bringing salvation to all the little kids inside. And maybe we believe that the teachers and other adults who are ‘taken’ along with the children actually go straight to heaven as well; martyrs for the truth. Congress can’t stop me, or else they’re preventing me from living my religion.
Or are there limits to the exercise of religion; is there some point at which activities inspired by religious ideals may be proscribed by government?

I think the attempt to define the limits of religious freedom are problematic. I’ve tried to formulate a set of rules, but I can’t think of everything that a religion ought to be allowed to do. I prefer the principle the Founders took when writing the Constitution — we don’t define what people are free to do, we assume the government can do nothing except what we specifically allow.

In relation to religion, then, the government is not allowed to regulate religious behavior. That is, government may not regulate any behavior on the grounds of motive. If the government wants to ban a specific behavior, it must ban it for all people, in all cases.

Take my silly example of blowing up schools. Murder is illegal for anyone, including members of my horrible church. We are allowed to meet on Sundays in a chapel that we have legally purchased, and we can even advocate the general destruction of children because everyone is allowed to engage in that type of free speech.

So, if a religion advocates the use of hallucinogens in religious ceremonies — should they be granted a special exemption by Congress to use them? No. That would be a law ‘respecting’ religion.

What if a religion wants to perform polygamous marriages? No. Nobody is allowed to do that, and no particular religious group should be granted an exception.
So, should religions be granted tax-exempt status? No. Unless we grant tax-exempt status to ALL non-profit organizations, and religions must conform to exactly the same regulations that all other groups do. (Which, incidentally, is what we do, here in the US.)

I’d be interested to hear anybody’s objections to this line of reasoning. It seems to me to be a pretty good solution to the problems we face with religious freedom questions.

“When I was young I used to pray for a new bike, then I realised God didn’t work that way,so I stold one and prayed that he would forgive me.”

-Anonymous